Germany’s federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), says she wants to take stronger action to combat knife crime.
“We should think about banning knives on public transport, on buses and trains,” Faeser told the Funke Media Group. “After all, anyone traveling by plane is not allowed to take a knife with them.” Apart from increasing security measures on public transport, Faeser said another solution could be weapon-free zones in certain urban areas.
The arrest of Querdenken leader Michael Ballweg raises some troubling questions.
For much of the pandemic, Michael Ballweg was a thorn in the side of Germany’s pro-lockdown establishment. Now, the 48-year-old businessman has become one of Germany’s most famous prisoners.
The typically open boarders government of Germany announced a temporary halt on admissions of asylum seekers from Afghanistan after claims that some migrants may have been abusing the system.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated that the country would be halting asylum applications for Afghan nationals on a temporary basis after sources within Berlin indicated that some may have tried to abuse the system.
“Rechte Richter” (“Right-Wing Judges”; no English edition so far) is a book published in 2022 by journalist and trained lawyer Joachim Wagner. Its subtitle asks the question: “A danger to the rule of law?”
Wagner is referring to cases like that of Jens Maier, who was a member of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party between 2017 and 2021. After his spell in parliament, he wanted to return to his post as a judge in the eastern state of Saxony.
This, however, didn’t happen, because Saxony’s Justice Minister Katja Meier took the matter to court and was successful: Maier, categorized as a right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), was sent into early retirement. The verdict is not yet final, however, because the suspended judge can appeal the decision.
When Lotte Mies went topless at an indoor swimming pool in the Berlin district of Kaulsdorf last December, she was asked to either cover her chest or leave the pool. The 33-year-old activist had already called ahead to check with staff that she could go topless and was told it would not be a problem. But when she refused to cover up, the police were called and Mies was forced to leave.
“It was more than humiliating for me that day and it really wasn’t nice to be treated like a second-class citizen on the basis of my gender and not to be able to decide for myself how to [present] my own body,” Mies told DW.
What could possibly go wrong?
Europe seems determined to go all the way down the road to the end of the nation state.
“Bilingual road signs are a symbolic expression of social inclusion. They show that people identify with their district and diversity.” Thus Samy Charchira, councilor of the Greens in Düsseldorf (very German name), where for the first time in Germany road signs in Arabic have been inaugurated – you know, such as in Cairo, Baghdad or Damascus.
“For several generations, many people, families and traders of Moroccan and North African origin have lived in the district” and “have contributed to building” Germany. “For this they deserve respect, admiration and representation”, underlined the Greens. Morocco’s consul Lalla Loubna Ait-Bassidi also praised the decision: “I am grateful that integration is being expressed in a way that people from 20 Arab nations can read and understand.”
Multiculturalism is the end of nation state and Europe seems determined to go down that road all the way.
German companies love America. According to the German-American Chamber of Commerce, around 5,600 of them have invested in the US market. As of September 2022, that’s an investment volume of almost $650 billion (€605 billion). And it’s not only big firms like Siemens, Volkswagen or Linde that are currently looking to strengthen their commitment to the United States — in some instances, even building entire new production facilities.
“There are various reasons for it,” says Dirk Dohse, who heads the Innovation and International Competition Research Center at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). “One is the increase in geopolitical tensions. Many German companies see the US as a ‘safe harbor.’ Other reasons are the comparatively low energy costs and the very generous subsidies provided under the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Germany’s military communications are so poor that soldiers in armoured vehicles are forced to open the hatches or clamber out and shout rather than use the radio, according to a damning report on the wider dysfunctionality in its armed forces.
The commission identified kit shortages, shoddy infrastructure and stifling red tape, ranging from dilapidated barracks with walls propped up by sandbags to 66 accidents caused by a standard-issue parachute that cannot be steered at high speeds or when the wind changes.
Note Google Translate – In the Alsterdorf district of Hamburg, there was a bloodbath in a church that left several dead. The fatal shots were fired just after 9 p.m. in a Jehovah’s Witnesses “Kingdom Hall” — a building used for worship.
According to BILD information, seven people were killed and at least eight others injured. Among them are several seriously injured, according to investigators. The police spoke of a large situation. The population was warned of “extreme danger” via the disaster warning app.
Twitter – Alsterdorf
BREAKING:
At least 14 shot in a mass-shooting in Hamburg, Germany.
6 people have been killed. pic.twitter.com/yJ0Ju6dCkG
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 9, 2023
From the DM – At least seven dead, ‘dozens injured’ in Hamburg bloodbath: ‘Gunmen’ open fire at Jehovah’s Witness church sparking ‘mass casualty incident’ in Germany’s second-biggest city – unclear if ‘shooters’ are dead or alive
They believe that a or the shooter may be among the dead, no motive.
A bit clearer picture emerging at the Guardian – At least seven killed and others wounded in Hamburg shooting
At least seven people have been killed and several more injured after a shooting in the northern German city of Hamburg, German media have reported, citing police and emergency services.
Police said the gunman was believed to be among the dead. “We have no indications of a perpetrator on the run,” a spokesman said.
Hamburg police tweeted earlier on Thursday evening that a major police operation was underway in the GrossBorstel district of the city, adding that they were urgently investigating the background, but gave no further details.
All we know – 7 dead, total likely includes the shooter, unconfirmed number of wounded as high as 14 according to reports, shooter not ID’d, no motive known. Police are calling it an “Amok” shooting according to Bild.de.
h/t HallsofMacadamia
The state intelligence chief in Saxony, one of the former states of the German Democratic Republic, has labeled Germans seeking to escape the multiculturalism of big cities for the more tranquil countryside ‘right-wing extremists.’
Dirk-Martin Christian, the president of the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV)—the East German state’s domestic intelligence agency—smeared those fleeing the “multicultural life” of large urban areas in search of an “intact national community” in more “remote areas” as radical extremists, the Berlin-based newspaper Die Welt reports.
The head of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) has said he expects Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to continue to hamper growth and inflate costs in the German economy.
German government interventions and a mild European winter have cushioned the blow of the war and its consequences, but Europe’s largest economy is likely heading for a recession.
DIW President Marcel Fratzscher said the war and its effect on driving up energy prices have already cost the German economy about €100 billion ($107 billion), or about 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
A few days before Christmas, a convoy of security vehicles invaded a quiet corner of Weilheim, a quaint Bavarian town of pastel squares and fastidiously kept cobblestone streets. Their target seemed as unassuming as the setting: a local children’s soccer coach.
Before then, nothing had stood out about the man, fellow coaches recalled. He was not short, but not tall — friendly, yet never wanting to discuss anything but soccer. Grasping for words, most landed on the same choice: “unremarkable.”
That changed when they learned he had been arrested on charges of treason and spying for Russia in one of the gravest espionage scandals in recent German history.
The de-escalatory, anti-war position taken by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party appears to have struck a chord with the German population. The latest opinion survey revealed that the party’s support has climbed to a record high, surpassing that of the hawkish Green party led by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
The number of criminal offenses, including violent knife attacks and sexual assaults, rose considerably on trains and at train stations in Germany over the past year. Official government figures reveal that incidents involving knife attacks more than doubled compared to the previous year.
While the federal police registered 398,848 criminal offenses on trains and at train stations in 2022, an uptick of roughly 12% compared to the previous year, 336 knife attacks—82 on trains and 254 at train stations—were recorded, representing an increase of 102% year over year, the Hamburg-based newspaper Der Spiegel reports.
According to the statistics collected by the federal police last year, 71 suspects were investigated for violent crimes involving the use of knives on trains, 36 of whom were classified as “non-Germans”—just over 50%. In the previous year, that figure was six of 25, or 24%.
At the height of the Cold War, it was Britain that appeared to be infested with Russian spies and moles. From the 1950s to the 1980s a series of security scandals, from the defections to Moscow of the Cambridge spies Burgess, Maclean and Philby, to the exposure of the Queen’s art advisor Anthony Blunt as a Soviet mole, made Britain in the eyes of her allies the weakest link in confronting Communist Russia.
